Month: August 2022

The hand sign for Worker is a blend of the hand signs Work and Agent. The hand sign for the person you work for and answer to is a single hand sign. For this leadership position in management, I went with a businesswoman. With a dictionary filled with its share of characters in suits, I have my boss lady dressed in a more modern look. The visual of tapping the shoulder can represent the burden of leadership, a chip on the shoulder, or the epaulettes of a captain’s uniform.
#ASL #signlanguage #boss #captain #leader #honcho #general #cartoon #dictionary

Last year, on May 12, I gave my friend Janeen the “Royal Treatment” for her birthday by animating her cartoon from my book. Today is my friend Rob’s birthday, and being Janeen’s husband, I thought I should do the same for him. Waterloo is an earlier picture from 2013. Even for the first drawing of this ASL hand sign, I needed my good friend Jannen to correct me. As I’ve stated before, animating my old artwork is tricky. In addition to keeping the ink lines extra thick to match the art style, I had to hunt down the Waterloo crest I placed on the shirt. Blinking with shades on is next to impossible to see, so I lowered the sunglasses to give him extra charm. In researching the movement of this city’s hand sign, I discovered another alternative sign, thanks to Handspeak.com. I added this version to the animation as well. Happy Birthday, Rob!

The reason I started this topic was to post this sign.
REM is the best part of sleeping. Mr. Sandman is famous for luck, providence, and giving people good dreams, but I went for a more colorful character, the handsome prince fairy-tale princesses dream of. With robes of royal purple and beautiful blue eyes, I couldn’t resist having my “love at first sight” hero blow a kiss.
#asl #signlanguage #dream #prince #cartoon #dictionary

With two versions of the hand sign for Bed, I used the same princess for both, merely changing the dress color from Pink to Blue. I have slept with up to five pillows, so this princess resting her head on both hands makes perfect sense. As my work on the ASL dictionary continued, I discovered I was drawing the hands bigger and bigger. But as the hands are the star of the show in my book, I rarely corrected their size. Wow, posting all these hand signs about sleeping in bed is making me tired.
#asl #signlanguage #bed #cartoon #dictionary

When you’re exhausted or under a magical spell, you can sleep anywhere and in any position, but the better place for both your back and quality of sleep is always the bed. For this hand sign, I went with the princess most famous for resting in bed in the deepest of sleep, Sleeping Beauty.
Here the young princess rests her head against her hand like laying her head against the pillow.
#asl #signlanguage #bed #cartoon #dictionary

While naps can be exceptional, Sleep remains the best form of Rest as the vital recovery time for the mind and the body. My first idea for the character was the Sandman. A fictional man puts children to sleep by sprinkling magic sand in their eyes. Because Sand makes a better background than the main character I went with the more dramatic model of a sleeping man in old-timey pajamas. My dictionary also has his eyes closed for this hand sign, the proper visual for slumber. Animating artwork from nine years ago can be tricky. I had to remember not to correct the original image found in my dictionary.
#asl #signlanguage #sleep #cartoon #dictionary

This week ASL Word of the Day will present the hand signs attached to Rest.
DRAINED
The need for Sleep. Clowns in my dictionary are used to show the ASL signs of Emotion (happy, sad, scared, etc.). As the word Tired can mean more than sleepy, I used a clown for the term that can also refer to being emotionally drained. With even the makeup under his eyes revealing his exhaustion, this drowsy clown shows the hand sign for Tired.
#asl #signlanguage #tired #exhaustion #fatigue #cartoon #dictionary

I mentioned this hand sign in a past post, ASL Word of the Day presents it visually today. In English, Agent can be a person acting on behalf of another, or a person or thing taking an active role for a specific result, like a spy.
In ASL, Agent has a different definition. Agent can be the noun for Person or the verb for Person who does, a suffix to turn certain verbs into nouns. This Agent-Marker is used in the title of several occupations. Ex. The combined signs Work-Person means Worker, Teach-Person means Teacher, Learn-Person means Student, and as mentioned before, Tooth-Person can mean Dentist. The sign for the English definition of Agent is fingerspelled.
I was in my second year of illustrating ASL signs for my dictionary and was still not confident enough to draw hands posed in certain positions. I drew this woman from an angle to make her hand sign clear.
#asl #signlanguage #agent #person #comic #dictionary

Harvested from trees or synthesized from petroleum, often mistaken for plastic. This strong waterproof elastic substance goes into boots, shoes, hoses, gaskets, belts, toys, tires, and erasers. Wizard of Oz characters make various cartoon cameos in my ASL Dictionary. The Cowardly Lion for All Right, the Scarecrow for Know, the Tinman for Metal, the Munchkins for Under, the Wicked Witch of the West for Ugly, the Wizard of Oz for Forget, and Dorothy for Remember. It’s no surprise I would turn to this colorful world yet again. With rubber wings on his back and a tail behind him, this flying monkey from a broadway production shows the hand sign for Rubber.
#asl #signlanguage #rubber #cartoon #dictionary